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Ranchers.net

Japan, US start talks on beef trade resumption

By Aya Takada | May 17, 2006

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and the United States started a crucial meeting on Wednesday to decide steps both sides should take to resume beef trade, suspended for four months over worries about mad cow disease.
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Acting U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Chuck Lambert expressed hope that by the end of the two-day technical meeting in Tokyo the two governments would reach agreement on when Japan, which used to be the largest foreign buyer of American beef, would reopen its market.

"We are here to answer any additional questions about our findings and to determine when and how trade will resume," Lambert said at the beginning of the meeting.

Japan suspended imports of U.S. beef on January 20, just a month after it partially lifted a two-year-old ban imposed over mad cow disease fears, when Japanese inspectors discovered banned spinal material in a veal shipment from New York.

Beef has become a thorny issue in relations between Japan and its closest ally. Before the ban, Japan was the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tonnes valued at $1.4 billion in 2003.

The Japanese daily Sankei newspaper reported on Wednesday that Japan's government would try to resolve the issue ahead of a trip to the United States by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for a meeting with President Bush, expected in late June.

But Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Jinen Nagase, asked about the report, told reporters, "I don't think this is something that should be influenced by a political schedule."

Michitaka Nakatomi, deputy director-general of the economic affairs bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry, reiterated Japan's stance that Tokyo would not allow U.S. beef imports to restart until Washington took measures to prevent further U.S. violations of the beef trade agreement.

"We hope this meeting will contribute to the elimination of scepticism over the reliability of the system agreed between the two countries," Nakatomi said during the meeting.

Last December, Japan lifted a ban on U.S. beef on condition that the meat came from animals no older than 20 months and that specified risk materials suspected of spreading mad cow disease, such as spinal cords, were removed before shipment.

Although the USDA promised that all U.S. beef shipments to Japan would meet the Japanese requirements, it failed to detect a violation when a shipment of veal containing banned spinal material was sent by a U.S. company to Japan in January.

This year U.S. packers have repeatedly made shipments that violated terms of beef export agreements with other importing countries.

In the latest case, Hong Kong banned beef shipments from Harris Ranch Beef Co. after inspectors this month found prohibited bone fragments in a shipment.

In the past two months, Hong Kong suspended beef imports from a Cargill plant in Dodge City, Kansas, and a Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colorado, because of bone fragments in beef.

Taiwan has also banned beef shipments from a Lexington, Nebraska, plant owned by Tyson Foods Inc. after it discovered bone fragments in a shipment in April.

Mad cow disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is believed to be caused by malformed proteins and spread through infected feed.

The human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is thought to be spread by eating contaminated meat. It has caused more than 160 deaths worldwide, including one in Japan.

Lambert said on Wednesday that U.S. beef was safe because of the very low prevalence of mad cow disease among U.S. animals, as well as the safety measures Washington has implemented to prevent the disease from spreading.

"The most likely number of BSE cases in the United States is somewhere between four to seven in our herd of 42 million adult animals," Lambert estimated during the meeting, based on the analysis of data USDA has compiled for the past seven years.

"U.S. beef is safe, and we look forward to working with our Japanese counterparts to finalize this process so trade can resume soon under the agreement we have with Japan," he said.
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